


La Vie et Les Roses

by CrackingLamb



Series: Junkyard Additions: A Series of Holiday Related Stories [6]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Curie being competent, F/M, First Kiss, X6 having an existential crisis, if you're reading this anywhere other than ao3 it's been stolen, please report it thanks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 11:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18991594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrackingLamb/pseuds/CrackingLamb
Summary: Curie is on the hunt for something to help with the General's discomfort while pregnant.  X6-88 is on the hunt to find meaning with his new personality.





	La Vie et Les Roses

**Author's Note:**

> A slight deviation from the rest of the series in terms of POV, but I've been wanting to get something purely Curie and X6 written for a long time. Hope you enjoy the murderbaby and the sciencebaby's little interlude.
> 
>  
> 
> *In case you have forgotten (or haven't read Food for Thought, part two of this series), X6-88 was memory wiped during a mission with Nora Howard. A new personality was programmed into his synth component and he is no longer a Courser.*

“Curie?”

“Yes, Monsieur X?”

He watched her bend at the waist to peer at the dark leaves of the undergrowth more closely. Watching her move like that did things to his insides he wasn't sure he wanted to examine. “What do you remember...about me?”

Straightening up, the Castle doctor looked over her shoulder at him, taking in the worn flannel and jeans, the boots with the thick soles and the sunglasses that felt so natural he rarely took them off. There was a nervous tone in his voice; he'd heard it as clearly as he could see her. He didn't know why he was so curious about the man he'd been before, only that some people reacted with fear when they saw him, and he didn't like that.

“Madame Howard never told you?” Curie asked, her eyebrows raised inquiringly.

“I'd like to know from you, too.”

“X6-88 was a Courser,” she replied, suddenly frosty and crisp as only she could be. “Madame returned from the her first foray into the Institute with him in tow. She called him her watchdog.”

“What does that even mean?”

Curie went back to examining the low growing plants along the road towards South Boston. She was looking for something specific, but she hadn't told him what it was. Spring was in full bloom in the Commonwealth, what little there was to bloom, anyway. Tiny flowers had poked up through the straggly grasses, the hubflowers had started and mutated ferns had unfurled the new season's fiddleheads, now tall and flourishing. But those were not what Curie was looking for.

“He was assigned to her by Father, the former Director, to keep an eye on her activities on the surface, from what I remember. But it wasn't long before he...”

“Fell under her spell?” the dark skinned synth interjected drily. There was something about the General that was mesmerizing, even in his half muddled state he could see it. Pre-war perfect was how Hancock described her. Nora Howard was whip smart, dedicated to saving lives and not afraid to be ruthless about it. X had no memory of Father, although he assumed he must have once known the Director well at one point. He had no memory of his former life as a Courser at all, unless one counted the nightmares that woke him in the dark sometimes. Flashes of fire, laser weapons and the cold, uncaring ripple of fear running down his spine were all he could recollect upon waking.

“Quite,” Curie said, interrupting his thoughts and bringing him back to the present. “Madame is very compelling, although I highly doubt she would agree.”

“So he... _I_ followed her, decided to join her in her quest to stop the Institute?”

“Not in so many words, no. The Courser programming kept him faithful to Father, but he was...divided. The longer he spent with Madame, the more he could see that _she_ was truly the best hope for humanity. Even ours. That is what she told me, at any rate.”

“Ours?”

“As synths. Madame has always believed synths are people too. Upon discovering the truth about Father, that he was her son, she made it her mission to liberate the synths. To stop the Institute's experiments and slavery practices. It is one of the reasons that led her to ultimately destroy it.”

“And I was okay with that?”

Curie looked thoughtful, giving her full attention to their conversation and no longer looking at the undergrowth around them. “I cannot say whether or not X6-88 approved of Madame's choice. I only know that he followed her and stood with her when the Institute attacked the Castle. I had not yet been...downloaded...into this body, so I was not here.”

“What was it like, Curie?”

“Converting from robotic unit to a person? It was a difficult transition. Many adjustments were necessary.”

“But you never felt...wrong about yourself?”

“No, my personality is...intact, I suppose. As a Miss Nannybot, I assuredly had greater capacity to store memory files, but this body has so much more sensory input to process...” She shrugged, the white lab coat that she nearly always wore shifting with the movement. “It was a fair trade, as they say. There is a spark in being human that I could never have achieved while still in robotic form.”

“I don't know where I fit now.”

“I do not believe Madame requires you to _fit_ anywhere. You are yourself, synth person, citizen of the Commonwealth. Madame just wants you to be happy and free.”

“I feel like there is more to me than I know.” He frowned. “That didn't make any sense.”

But Curie nodded as if she knew what he meant. “You suffered a great loss in losing your memory. With time it may return, but for the present, you are merely X, and no longer X6-88.”

He gazed at her, so comfortable in a body that should have foreign to her and wondered how long it was going to take for him to regain what he'd lost, assuming she was right and he could. It had been five months since his 'accident'. He was impatient for things to return to normal. To no longer feel like a stranger in his own skin. And he didn't quite know _why_ it was important to him, or why his impatience was a factor.

“Tell me what you are looking for out here,” he said, changing the subject both aloud and in his head. “Perhaps I can help.”

“Madame was complaining of itchy skin now that her pregnancy has progressed. I am looking for roses. They contain a compound that when mixed with glycerin should ease her discomfort.”

“What do roses look like?”

“Mon dieu, do you not know? Forgive me, of course you do not. Even in the Institute, I do not think they had such decorative flowers.” She looked around for a moment, scanning the landscape of South Boston with a keen eye. “Roses grow on shrubs such as these, with thorns on the branches. The flowers are pungent and sweet, rather heady, I would say. They are usually red or pink.”

“How do you know about them?”

“At one time I knew all there was to know about medicinal botanicals.” She looked forlorn for a moment, remembering things he had no knowledge of. But then she brightened and smiled. It was like watching the sun come out from behind a cloud. “I am already pleased with how many plants survived the apocalypse. I am sure roses are among them too.”

He quirked his lips in something like a smirk, but said nothing. She was forever optimistic about the world. It was something he loved about her.

That thought stopped him dead in his tracks. Did he love Curie? Was it just because they were both displaced beings, both synths? Or was it something deeper, something less tangible. Certainly, just as he had no memory of his former self, he had no memory of how he felt about her before. But since his return to the Castle, he found himself drawn to her. From one viewpoint, he could appreciate her aesthetic beauty, her brilliant mind, boundless optimism and her forthright demeanor. But it was more than that. She appealed to him, on a level he wasn't sure he could understand. He had to fight the urge to touch her sometimes, to ask her things that were in no way related to their work together. It was inexplicable and yet...yet...he wanted...

“Aha!” she exclaimed, having moved up the road a good distance from where he stood. “I have found one!”

He hurried to her side, looking at the plant she displayed to him with a critical eye, fixing it in his mind. The leaves were a dark, glossy green and the thorns were plentiful and sharp looking. The flowers themselves were not yet open, although he could see where they would be soon. Tearshaped buds were splitting apart, the red showing through the lighter green of the outer covering. The blossoms were bunched together, six or seven at the end of a stem, and the bush was covered in them. In full bloom, it would be a riotous mix of colors.

Curie cut several bunches of buds and placed them in a bundle in her basket – one that she had woven herself with his assistance about a month ago. She moved with precision around the thorns, although she did manage to prick her fingers once or twice, swearing under breath and jerking her hand. It was remarkably endearing to hear expletives fall from her otherwise normally innocent mouth. He couldn't help but smile.

“Do you need help?” he asked, stepping closer to her. Her labcoat had gotten snagged as she maneuvered through the bush, trying to find bunches that were nearly ready to open. Now she was hopelessly entangled in the briars.

“I do, yes,” she said with a sigh. He carefully pulled the thorns free from her coat, steadfastly ignoring the closeness of her, the heat she emanated, the scent in her hair. It was always confusing to him, this visceral bodily reaction he had when they were in each other's proximity. He wished it would go away, or perhaps he wished more that he knew what to do with it. He wondered if she felt the same way.

She was nearly free from the rose bush when she turned her head, as if she'd heard his thought like he'd spoken it. Her clear green eyes widened perceptibly as he didn't move away from her. He couldn't remember the last time he'd stood so close to her that didn't involve one of her many ongoing experiments or inventions. There was no one around but them, nothing to stop him from leaning in and...doing something. He didn't even know.

He was distracted by her lips parting, a small inhalation as she breathed in with wonder. “X?” she murmured.

“I don't know what I'm...”

“I believe it goes like this,” she said softly, closing the few inches between them and tilting her head to the side. Her lips met his, gently, barely touching. He was suddenly on fire from his scalp to his toes. His gut churned with countless, nameless things. He wanted to reach out to her, put his arms around her, draw the kiss out more, but he didn't know if that was expected...or wanted. He had an almost unstoppable urge to be more forceful, to imprint himself upon her. He didn't understand it. All he could think was that he didn't want to hurt her.

She pulled away, her eyes shining in the spring sunlight. He stood his ground, wondering even as he did why he felt a need to run away. Was this fear?

“We should get back before Madame worries,” Curie said, taking the first step back herself and straightening her labcoat – unnecessarily to his mind. She wasn't that rumpled, after all.

“Of course,” he replied, somewhat mindlessly. Maybe Hancock could give him some pointers on how to go about all of this. He certainly seemed to keep the General happy. X was fully aware of the mechanics of physical intimacy, in theory anyway.  Who knew what his previous incarnation had known. And it was obvious that Nora and Hancock engaged in such, since she was just two months shy of delivering their baby. He resolved to ask the ghoul at his earliest opportunity.

For now, however, he walked back towards the Castle with Curie, listening to her talk about roses and how she needed to find a source for the glycerin, or whether she should attempt to make it herself with the compounds she had. He listened with half an ear, keeping watch for anything around them that might be a threat. It was automatic and not something he'd bothered to think about. Was that a holdover of his former self? If it was he was grateful. It gave him something else to focus on while his mind whirled and his gut clenched.

Nora met them at the gate of the Castle, her eyes amused as she took the pair in. “You kids have fun?”

X felt a flush creep up his neck to his face, and was thankful his skin was too dark to show it. Curie smiled sheepishly herself and Nora's face took on a more thoughtful expression.

“We were successful in our quest, ma'am,” X forced himself to say flatly, without inflection. For some reason, Nora broke into a huge smile and rubbed her belly distractedly.  He had no way of knowing that his previous self has used that flattened tone whenever he felt strong emotion and was trying to hide it.  Or that his General was aware that he'd once used the self defense mechanism to keep himself safe from Institute backlash.

“That's great news, X,” she said, still smiling. “I'm glad.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Also for anyone in the US reading this, happy Memorial Day. Never forget those who never came home.


End file.
